Availability check: GeForce 8800 GT and Radeon HD 3870

Last week, we kicked off our availability check feature, in which we probe the prevalence of both Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT and AMD's Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards across major U.S. online retailers. We're bringing the feature back today, and instead of having separate posts for the 8800 GT and 3870, we're including them both here.

Like last week, we couldn't check every possible retailer, so we restricted ourselves to the four computer hardware-oriented e-tailers with the most reviews on both our price search engine and ResellerRatings.com: Newegg, TigerDirect, ZipZoomFly, and Buy.com. These should be the largest, and they should do a good job of representing general availability and pricing. To get our data, we made a search on each e-tailer for "GeForce 8800 GT" and "Radeon HD 3870" and cataloged the results. Available models are highlighted in green.

Compared to last week, availability has definitely improved. The distribution of cards is more even, and there are 15 available models now, compared to nine last time. However, the cheapest available 8800 GT is now $279.99 instead of $269.99, and average prices have gone up at Newegg, TigerDirect, and ZipZoomFly (Buy.com didn't have any listings last time). Our total average is now $310.92 instead of $305.82.

We reported last week that Radeon HD 3870s would become more widely available this week, but the situation is hardly any better today than it was last Friday. Three cards were available then, four are available now. Prices are higher, too: all available models are now $269.99, whereas last time Newegg had a card in stock for $249.99.

Overall, it looks like Nvidia was the one to make strides this week. As we reported earlier today, the company's GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is now available, too. However, prices are still well above officially announced ranges in both AMD's and Nvidia's cases, and they've actually gone up.

Update 8:00 PM: Three more GeForce 8800 GTs have gone in stock: the ASUS EN8800GT/G/HTDP/512M at Newegg for $299.99, the XFX PVT88PYDQ4 at TigerDirect for $309.99, and the EVGA 512-P3-N802-A1 at ZipZoomFly for $299.99. ZipZoomFly has also dropped the price of its MSI NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC card from $329.99 to $299.99, lowering the 8800 GT average slightly. As for the Radeon HD 3870, Newegg's ASUS EAH3870/G/HTDI/512M has gone out of stock, leaving only three cards.

Update 10:30 PM: XFX's PVT88PYDD4 GeForce 8800 GT is now available at Newegg for $309.99, while ZipZoomFly's lone eVGA card has gone out of stock. On the Radeon HD 3870 front, Newegg now stocks GeCube and PowerColor cards, both at $249.99. TigerDirect has also stopped listing its PowerColor card and added a Diamond model, although it only stocks the VisionTek right now.